American bombs are now falling on Tehran, and while Donald Trump ultimately pulled the trigger, administrations before him – Republican and Democrat alike – constructed the gun, and even loaded it.
In 1995, US president Bill Clinton issued executive orders banning US investment tied to Iran’s petroleum sector and, soon after, most US trade with and investment in Iran. His administration justified the sanctions with an accusation that would later be used against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq not even a decade later: “Iran’s efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction” and their alleged support for terrorism.
The International Atomic Energy Agency – which had visited Iran a few years prior to inspect their nuclear activity – reported no evidence of nuclear weapons.
In 1996, Congress followed up with the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act – which passed 415-0 in the House, and by unanimous consent in the Senate – targeting foreign and US companies investing more than $20 million a year in Iran’s energy sector.
Much like embargoes on Iraq, which were linked to catastrophic civilian deaths, over time, American sanctions on Iran decimated the economy and its people by devaluing currency, shrinking living standards, and limiting access to food and medicine.
In 2000, a report by a neoconservative think-tank called Project for the New American Century warned that even if Saddam Hussein were removed, “the need for a substantial American force presence” in the region would remain because “Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests in the Gulf” as Iraq has.
Several prominent figures involved with the think-tank later joined the Bush administration, including Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and John Bolton.
In 2001, shortly after 9/11, Iran offered counter-terrorism assistance to the US, but instead, President Bush lumped them in with Iraq and North Korea under an umbrella he termed the “Axis of Evil”. Clinton-era sanctions were kept in place, new ones were added, and covert measures began to undermine the Iranian establishment.
That same year, Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force by a vote of 420-1 in the House and 98-0 in the Senate, granting the president sweeping authority to use military action against those connected to the 9/11 attacks. Although Iran had no connection to 9/11, the deliberately broad language of the bill created a permanent legal framework for military action across the Middle East without requiring new congressional approval.
Towards the end of Bush’s final term in office, a 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate (a comprehensive report involving all US intelligence agencies) concluded with “high confidence” that Iran was not currently building a nuclear weapon.
Still, Barack Obama’s policies continued beating the drums of war.
In 2010, he significantly expanded financial sanctions on Iran’s oil, gas, and banking sectors – measures that severely restricted access to essential medicines in Iran – which passed the House 408–8 and the Senate 99–0.
At the same time, his administration intensified Bush-era cyber operations against Iranian nuclear facilities. The Stuxnet computer worm – reportedly developed by the US and Israel – was credited with disabling hundreds of centrifuges and delaying enrichment efforts, even though the nuclear program continued to show no signs of weaponization.
In 2015, Obama concluded a nuclear deal that imposed strict limits on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. But its premise was a masterclass in propaganda that worked to build further consensus for war, first by painting Iran as an aggressor, and second by continuing to perpetuate a narrative that it was interested in pursuing nuclear weapons, despite continued evidence to the contrary.
Meanwhile, far more aggressive American allies in the region – namely, Israel – were exempt from such scrutiny, with their own nuclear stockpile shrouded in secrecy and tucked away from international oversight of any kind.
After the nuclear deal lifted certain sanctions in 2016, Iran’s economy rebounded. And yet at the same time, US and Israeli hawks continued to fret, alternating their fearmongering and moving the goalpost away from Iran’s nonexistent nuclear weapons and instead towards their regional influence and ballistic missile program.
Republicans and Democrats joined together the following year to pass new sanctions on Iran’s missile program, along with entities tied to the Revolutionary Guard. These measures were approved with a vote of 419-3 in the House, 98-2 in the Senate.
Fortunately for the many warmongers adorning both major political parties, the arrangement with Iran had been signed late into Obama’s second term, paving the way for a new president to conveniently overturn it.
In 2018, Donald Trump did exactly that. His administration unilaterally withdrew from the deal and reimposed sanctions. In April 2019, the US designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – Iran’s most powerful military and political force – as a foreign terrorist organization. The following year, Trump ordered a drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, head of the Guard Corps’ Quds Force, a dramatic escalation.
Taking office in January 2021, the administration of Joe Biden largely maintained Trump’s “maximum pressure” framework, leaving existing sanctions in place, along with Trump’s designation of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
And while Biden campaigned on rejoining the nuclear deal, once in office, he demanded Iranian compliance as a prelude to sanction relief, which effectively made it impossible given growing Iranian distrust for the US.
In late 2022, after being asked about the nuclear deal by a woman appearing to wear a hair ribbon in Iran’s flag colors, Biden reportedly responded that the deal was “dead”, adding, “I know they don’t represent you, but they will have a nuclear weapon.”
Two years later, an assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence found that Iran “has undertaken activities that better position it to produce one, if it so chooses” but added that “the Intelligence Community continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.”
Even so, in October 2024, when asked who she thought America’s “greatest adversary” was, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris replied: “I think there’s an obvious one in mind, which is Iran.”
Harris, like Trump, repeated the lie that Iran was in the business of pursuing nukes, saying the US “will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. Period.” And like Trump, she maintained that “all options” remained on the table to keep them from obtaining nuclear weapons, including military force.
In 2025, a majority of Democrats voted with Republicans to hand the Trump administration $900 billion in military spending, which provided funding for Pentagon operations, weapons procurement, overseas deployments, and military readiness programs for the upcoming fiscal year.
At nearly every stage, Republicans and Democrats in Congress – along with presidents from both major parties – have laid the foundation for a war on Iran.
The Bush administration lied its way into an invasion of Iraq, but nobody was held accountable. The Obama administration expanded the Bush-era Authorization for Use of Military Force to include drone-bombings in at least seven different countries, along with the targeting of US citizens accused of terrorism, and again, nobody was held accountable. Trump built on these precedents during his first term not only by amping up Obama’s drone strikes, but also by assassinating an Iranian commander. Again, no accountability. The Biden administration funded Israel’s flattening of the Gaza Strip while also shielding it from repercussions at the United Nations and International Criminal Court, effectively demonstrating that the so-called rules of international law were never fair, but instead, selectively applied.
Over time, escalation itself became normalized.
Economic warfare became cyber sabotage. Cyber sabotage became targeted assassinations. What were once extraordinary war powers became permanent executive authorities. By the time Trump entered the White House for his second term, the framework for America’s long-awaited war on Iran was already in place.
All he had to do was pull the trigger.
